


Sometimes Better is Enough - Platonic VLD Week Day #4

by hufflepirate



Series: Platonic VLD Week [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 17:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10035374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: After Pidge finds video of her brother's escape, she's thrown into a sea of competing emotions.  When Shiro finds her sitting on the bridge, watching the video and feeling guilty, she thinks having to explain herself is going to make it all worse.  Luckily, it turns out Shiro knows just what to say.Prompt was: Enemies / Family





	

The video of Matt's rescue was just a few seconds long, and Pidge was pretty sure she'd been watching it for hours, now. She felt powerfully about it, but her emotions were all jumbled, lots of things at once, and it just got worse the longer she watched it, looping automatically like the old "vines" she'd seen in an archive once.

It was good that Matt was free. It _was_. It meant he probably wasn't being hurt anymore, and he probably wasn't fighting in the arena, like Shiro had, and he probably was somewhere better. But as relieved as she felt to know he was alive, she couldn't seem to make herself feel happy about his escape. He could be anywhere now. Anywhere in the universe.

At least before, she'd known where to look. She'd known _how_ to look. And there had always been a chance, every mission, that she'd find him. One of her hacks would turn up information, or they'd capture someone who had seen him, or she'd just round a corner one day, and there he'd be.

Now, she knew she wouldn't find him by accident, and she didn't have the faintest idea where to start looking.

She didn't know how many times the video had played while she was zoning out to think about all that, but one of its restarts caught her attention again, and she watched it again, and she couldn't hold it in anymore. Her feelings came out as a strangled growl, and she didn't know what _that_ meant, either.

What was wrong with her? Why couldn't she just be happy that Matt was free? Wasn't it better for him to be free than for her to feel like she would be able to find him? Why did she have to be so selfish? Was she just a horrible person?

The video started over, and she noticed all the same old details again. Matt looked awful. He looked like they'd been hurting him. He looked like he was going to fight. He looked like her, like what she saw in the mirror now that she'd cut her hair. They were the same. They were the same, and if it were her, she'd want to be free and _why couldn't she just feel happy_?

"Hey," Shiro's voice was gentle as he sat down next to her, where she leaned against the back of Coran's control console on the bridge, facing the windows. "We're starting to worry about you. What's going on?"

Pidge couldn't answer that, so she just held up the video where he could see it better. It got to the end and restarted. Shiro reached over and turned it off, gently. "Pidge, you can't beat yourself up about that," he said.

She almost said she wasn't, but explaining what was really going on, even if she had the words for it, would just horrify him, she was pretty sure. So she didn't.

"If anything, _I_ 'm the one who should feel guilty. Your brother and Sam were scientists. I was their pilot. I should have protected them."

"But you _did_!" Pidge exclaimed, words tumbling out before she could really think about them, now that somebody else's feelings were at play, "I - I know I got mad at you when I found out about you attacking Matt, but we both know why you did it. You _saved_ him, and all I've done is just - just -" _Just wish he was still locked up so I'd know where he was_. She couldn't say that. She couldn't.

"All you've done," Shiro said, calmly but seriously, "is break into a world-class training facility, build a machine capable of intercepting alien communications, find a spaceship, and fly clear across the universe to look for your family. I know we've put them on the back burner a lot. I _know_ that. But you're still _here_ , Pidge. And you're still here, because you came to save your family. And we will. Ok? We will."

"It's just -" she said, "Every time we come in contact with a Galra computer I search it. Every time we're on a mission, I'm looking, like maybe they're gonna be there, and I-" No. She couldn't go there. Her eyes were watering, and she used the tears as an excuse to stop talking and scrub her face with her sleeve.

"Hey," Shiro said gently, holding his hand up for a moment like he wasn't certain and then putting it down again, "I know you've been looking, and I know it's been a long time, and I know it must be frustrating to see that he's been - and that he's still not with your dad, but-"

Pidge shook her head. She couldn't do this. She couldn't explain this.

Suddenly, Shiro's arms were around her, pulling her close, and she wasn't sure why he'd picked this moment for it when he was usually less huggy than anyone but Keith, but she _was_ sure she'd needed the hug. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest, letting herself cry because she was already crying anyway, and Shiro didn't seem to mind, and she wasn't sure she could help it even if she tried.

When her tears turned into sobs, Shiro rearranged them, carefully, so that she was sitting in his lap, tucked safely against him, and let her cry herself out, and she didn't pressure herself to stop crying because it had been a while since she'd really been held, and it was kind of nice. And then she thought about how selfish that was, and she cried a little more. It hadn't hurt at all when Keith told her she was selfish for wanting to put her family before the rest of the galaxy. But here she was _thinking about_ her family and she kept putting herself first. She shouldn't cry just because Shiro was here. She shouldn't wish Matt was captured just so she could rescue him herself. She shouldn't. She did.

Shiro kept holding her even after she'd cried herself out, keeping his arms wrapped loosely around her as she leaned back away from him, pressing against his chest with one hand so she'd have the space to wipe her nose on her other sleeve. "Why can't I just be happy that he got away?" she asked.

It was too much, maybe, but so was crying, and Shiro hadn't left yet, and she didn't have the energy to spend on worrying about it, anymore. She felt drained and a little hollow, like she still had some of the feelings that had been surrounding her, but they were at the end of a tunnel, now, not coming back for a while.

"I don't know," Shiro answered. "Maybe because he's still not _here_. I don't feel that happy about it either. Not as much as I thought I would."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I think about him being away and it's better than thinking about him being _there_. I think about him being away from _them_ and I'm happy for a second, but then all the other stuff hits me, and I'm worried that wherever he is now isn't better. I'm worried he'll get captured again, or he'll be starving worse than we were with the Galra or he'll never find his way back to us. But it's still _better_. I don't feel happy, but I feel _better_."

She did _mostly_ feel better thinking about her big brother free and fighting somewhere. When she wasn't getting caught up in the guilt of everything, she felt great about it. It _was_ better than before, until she thought about it the wrong way again. She tried to keep that in mind.

"I don't know how to look for him anymore," she admitted, leaning back against Shiro's chest so she didn't have to look him in the eye, "When he was with the Galra, I could guess. I could hack in and make my best guess about where his info would be, where to try. Now, I don't even know where to start. And that's scary."

"So, we'll keep looking," Shiro answered, "We'll ask around. We actually meet about as many other people as we do Galra soldiers. We'll ask them instead. Maybe somebody'll hear about the rebels, or people escaping. At least he's safe."

"What if he's _not_ safe, though?"

"Then we'll still find him. He's tough, if he's made it this long. Just like you."

She slid out of his lap, sitting on the floor next to him. He didn't get it. Not really. Not yet. "I just wish I _knew_ ," she explained softly, tucking her knees into her chest.

Shiro was silent for just long enough that she thought she might have lost him, might have said too much. Then, finally, he spoke. "We can still hope, though. We _have_ to hope. Because I think about that a lot. If your family knew you were out here, fighting Zarkon, if they knew how _not safe_ you and me and the rest of the Paladins are, I wonder how they'd feel about it. I wonder how Lance's folks would feel, or Hunk's. But we still have to do it. Because it's the right thing. We're in the right place. It's _right_. So maybe Matt's not safe. But he's _free_. He's free, and those rebels look like fighters, and if he's free and he's fighting, that's _right_. And of course we'll meet up. We'll have to. We're all fighting the same fight. Aren't we?"

He seemed to have gotten lost in his own thoughts now, staring out the window instead of looking over at her. "I hope so," she answered, "and I hope it happens soon. I don't like all this not knowing."

Shiro turned to her with a smile. "Yeah. You're not great at that."

No, she was not. But Shiro was still sitting here, and he didn't look like he was going to move any time soon, and maybe that was enough, for right now. Maybe she and Shiro could just hope together, right now, and find out something new tomorrow.


End file.
